RIP PowerMac G5 Redux

2009-05-13, 02:35

If you’d read the comments on the previous post, you’d have seen that Brent Cameron suggested I try the Apple Hardware Test that came with my G5. A capital idea, I thought, and wondered why I didn’t think of it myself. I fired up the G5 and it took 15 minutes booting and never did finish so in annoyance I rebooted it with Command-Option-O-F held down to invoke Open Firmware. That worked just fine, and I was able to eject the CD and reboot the machine successfully. I held down Option to invoke the startup disk chooser and booted the Hardware Test. And after a couple of minutes of booting the machine’s fans spun up to hurricane-speed. I looked up at the screen and the hardware test had crashed. I tried again and still the same thing. I’m kinda stumped at this point. I think I’ll just get a rig of external drives and populate them with the drives out of my G5, and then get a shiny new MacPro when I’ve got a bit more spare cash.